Or perhaps they had been brought much closer when their firstborn died, because such events have one of two results: either one partner irrationally blames the other for not sensing the danger and failing to protect and save the child, with husband and wife becoming increasingly isolated, cut off, to the point where they can hardly bear to speak to or look at one another, or else they stand by each other and serve as both mirror and support: seeing their partner’s grief, the wife, say, takes pity on her husband and often takes his hand or suddenly caresses or embraces him when they pass in the gloomy corridor along which small, quick steps no longer run, children only being capable of moving from one place to another hurriedly, precipitately, because the child they were left with, Susana, could not yet walk. If she was fifteen or more now, that was how long it had been since the disappearance of the brother with whom she had coincided only briefly in the world and whom she never knew.
I had always felt sympathetic towards Beatriz Noguera, had always liked her; when I found out about the death of her child, I inevitably felt even more sympathy as well as something approaching respect; it’s impossible not to feel both things for someone who has suffered the loss of a child, who, however small, was already walking and babbling and asking a few elementary questions because he understood so little of the world around him. We also view with more interest someone who we know has had to overcome terrible grief and who never talks about it, mentions it or uses it to gain our pity. And so when Beatriz came home, looking thinner, but otherwise very well, with barely any visible signs that she had attempted to end her own life, she found me even more disposed to help and watch over her, to distract her and keep her company, as Muriel had instructed. He had, in effect, given me a reason to get closer to her, to talk to her, which I had always held back from doing before, out of a mixture of distance and shyness, fearing she might notice my theoretical feelings of embarrassment, of vague sexual admiration, something like the illusory desire aroused by a painting that I described earlier, but nothing more than that.
Rather than being released from hospital, it was as though she had returned from a sleep cure, her skin smooth and firm, her eyes bright, albeit quiet and slightly dreamy, even walking more lightly, more delicately, less determinedly, and nearly always wearing her high heels as if wanting to appear as attractive as possible for as long as possible or as if she were about to set off to one of her rendezvous, except that, during that time, she didn’t go out at all, apart from with Rico, who claimed he had stayed in Madrid in order to help, but was probably there in order to carry out some worldly manoeuvrings of vital importance to him alone, and who would turn up at the apartment to persuade her to go shopping or to a lecture or to a late-afternoon screening, even making impertinent jokes about her recent desperate action and about which she may have preferred not to talk.
‘When are you going to show me those cuts of yours, Beatriz? Don’t let them heal up without giving me a look at them while they’re still red raw,’ he would say tactlessly, being of the school that believes there is no better therapy than shock therapy, no better cure than making a mockery or a parody of any deep mental wound; and he would point at the bandages she had on her wrists, the only obvious sign of her recent hotel mishap or adventure. ‘I want to know how you did it, whether vertically or horizontally, methodically or just any old how, in the form of an X or a cross, with minimal artistic intent or like a barber suffering from Parkinson’s; in your place, I think I might have idled away the time playing noughts and crosses with the razor. Urfe, tirsto, érbadasz.’ He had days when he was more than usually given to uttering his unintelligible semi-onomatopoeia and would sometimes come out with three on the trot. Fortunately, he wasn’t living in the Middle Ages that he so worshipped or in his beloved Renaissance, because people then would have taken these for some diabolical language or oaths addressed to Beelzebub, and the Professor would have ended up being burned; I couldn’t resist imagining him tied to the stake, with his glasses on and (naturally) a cigarette between his lips, proudly declaiming exquisite speeches before being devoured by the flames.
Beatriz didn’t seem to mind, she may even have been grateful for his frank, frivolous humour. She laughed enough to make one think that the Professor was perhaps right to treat the whole episode with such healthy disrespect, and she promised him she would show him her wounds one day, before they had completely blended in with her natural skin colour.
‘But that will take a long time, Professor. Besides, I’ll always have the scars, so your curiosity is sure to be satisfied sooner or later.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Beatriz. These days, plastic surgery can erase anything. I know what you women are like. If you don’t resort to surgery, then you’ll cover your wrists with bracelets as big as hitching rings and there’ll be nothing to see. Don’t underestimate your future embarrassment, because it will come.’
‘I’m not lying to you, Professor. The next time they change my bandages, I’ll give you a call. Just don’t expect any artistry,’ said Beatriz, more seriously this time, as if she had just succumbed to an early attack of that predicted embarrassment or were reliving the moment when one liquid invaded another, the first drops of blood clouding the water, the signal for her to begin dying, to pine palely away. In fact, her voice faltered slightly when she spoke her next words. Rico was busy meticulously refilling his cigarette case, but even he noticed, looked up and listened with understanding and sorrow, a sorrow I shared. I felt a youthful desire to get up and embrace Beatriz and whisper softly: ‘There, there, it’s all right.’ I did not, however, give in to that inappropriate impulse. ‘It’s hard enough to get up the courage to cut yourself, and I preferred not to look. The foam from the bubble bath helped though.’
Something similar to an embrace happened shortly afterwards.
Dr Van Vechten used to drop by later in the morning to see how the wounds were healing and to change the bandages. He didn’t linger, it was more of a professional visit than a social one, and in my presence there was never any indication that what I knew to have happened between them ever did actually happen and perhaps it no longer did (in other people’s relationships, you never know when something begins or ends), they were both well practised at pretending; or perhaps, if they shared no strong feelings, no grand passions, they didn’t need to pretend. One day, I accompanied him to the front door (‘You stay where you are, Beatriz, I’ll see the Doctor out’), and on the landing, with the front door closed so that we couldn’t be heard, I seized the opportunity and asked:
‘Why doesn’t she go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist?’ And I gestured with my head towards the apartment. ‘I thought that was obligatory after any suicide attempt. Or at least advisable.’
He arched his eyebrows and took a deep breath in, his nostrils dilated. Then, breathing out again like someone summoning up all his patience, he said: